


this will linger

by Lleavingwonderland



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, Piper processing Jason's death, Post-The Burning Maze, this is just straight up angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 02:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15698304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lleavingwonderland/pseuds/Lleavingwonderland
Summary: "She had seen so many illusions and horrors over the past two years, and had walked away from them all. Walked away with Jason at her side. Now the one she wanted to wake up from more than any, it just wouldn’t end. The sun rose and the nightmare stretched into day, unfurling into its full horror as her new life."— Piper processes Jason’s death.





	this will linger

Piper finished her homework hours ago. She had eaten dinner with her father and sat outside in the long lingering dusk. She had said good night to him and lay in bed scrolling through a quiet playlist and never settling for a song. It was nights like this that were the worst. Not because of school or her father, but because it was 4 am and she was wide awake flirting with memories from the past two years that brought her right to the edge of her breaking point and every time threatened to push her over. Because in the morning she would go to school on no sleep and Be Fine and keep her head down and do her work. Because she didn’t have a choice. 

Not two weeks ago she had been sinking in the sand, bleeding, delirious with pain and grasping Jason’s lifeless body. She can’t ever get it out of her head. The cold clammy feeling of his skin, slick with sea spray and the slack horror of his dead face. Staring up at her. His entire body shredded with cuts from Medea’s storms, gaping wounds from arrows in his arms, and on his shoulders—where her hands held him up off the ground in a final embrace—the fatal wounds from Caligula’s spear. Even after leaving the beach that night. The ambulance. The police station. Eventually the hospital for her own injuries. And the blood. Under her fingernails, in her hair, on her clothes, her shoes. She couldn’t even shower to get it off because of the neat row of stitches above her mouth. She didn’t even know if it was her blood or his. The last mingling of their bodies in red stains on an old t-shirt that promptly got thrown away, unsalvageable. Then, finally, with nothing left to scrub away, no more first responders to give half heartedly charmspoken statements to, and with Jason in a morgue across town, in the gray light of predawn she found herself huddled against her father in their empty home and staring. Just staring. Thinking this was all just a vision or a dream or a trick of the mist. 

She had seen so many illusions and horrors over the past two years, and had walked away from them all. Walked away with Jason at her side. Now the one she wanted to wake up from more than any, it just wouldn’t end. The sun rose and the nightmare stretched into day, unfurling into its full horror as her new life. The next two weeks were a blur of missed meals, sleeping too much, and not enough, anger, crying, trying not to cry and eventually looking up and being back in Oklahoma. And even thousands of miles and minutes removed she still had never really left the beach that night. 

She went to her new school, went to class came home and fell into a routine of distraction. Her father, previously the more distraught by their current state, was now her rock. He was always there. Even when she didn’t want him to be. But he would never really understand what had happened. How could he? When she had drugged him to forget the world of gods and monsters? When she had told him she was at a summer camp in New York instead of traveling across the world? When all he knew about Jason was that he went to the same camp and was from California, a handsome blond that had come into and out of his daughters affections? 

He didn’t know about the wolf house. About Rome. About the nymphaeum. He didn’t know about the Mediterranean. About Athens. And about the thrill and horror of a daily fight for your survival. He didn’t know what it was like to look at the person you’re closest to in the entire world and realize “I’m not in love with you” then weeks later bear witness to his murder. He didn’t know the crucible they were forged in and the shock to the system it was to leave it. But he tried to help. 

Piper stared at the dark ceiling above her bed positively suffocating in memory. Guilt. Regret. Aside from physical separation from both demigod camps, communications were still down thanks to the Triumvirate so she couldn’t even call Annabeth or Leo and talk to someone who understood. She was left to navigate the shock of grief and loss and relocation all at once. And she thought it might kill her. 

After all the giants and monsters and even that bitch Medea, she was going to die alone in Oklahoma because she couldn’t cope as a mortal. Truth be told the only person she wanted to talk to about any of it—her life, her memories, Jason’s death—was Jason. He had a steadiness to him that even when everyone else around him was overcome with emotion he could see the way ahead. That was what made him a natural leader. That was why people gravitated toward him.

She thought about some of the conversations they’d had when they decided to end it, when he had moved out. He had chosen to go to school in Pasadena instead of going back Camp Jupiter full time not because of a chafing at the rules or desire to stay near her but because he was thinking of the future. He had a brain for math and science and was thinking about going to university to be an engineer. Piper tossed aggressively in her bed as if she could shake the memory off her skin. He never even got the chance. 

As a demigod she knew that no one was guaranteed tomorrow much less happily ever after, but she had hoped that for herself and her friends from the Argo II that maybe their greatest hardships were behind them. With only the normal ahead. But instead she would be taking the ACT in the fall and probably remedial courses in the summer, going to camp if she could. Leo was making a life in Indianapolis with Calypso. Percy and Annabeth were planning a future in New Rome. Frank and Hazel were secure in the legion. And Jason was six feet under. Consigned to oblivion in Hades. Not to say that Elysium was hell (and he had gone to Elysium, she was sure of that) but that it was only a shadow, a faded recreation of life. Being alive was a gift. She hadn’t quite grasped the magnitude of her gift until Jason’s was so unceremoniously destroyed. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in May when I finished reading Burning Maze and just not got around to posting it.  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
